Education, From The Capitol To The Classroom

Stories about students: How does education policy affect the way students learn and grow? Can schools meet their needs as they balance ramped-up testing with personal changes and busy schedules? And are students who need help getting it?

Stories about educators: How are those responsible for implementing education policy in schools − from classroom teachers, to district administrators, to school board members − affected by changes at the top? And how well do they meet their challenge of reaching students with varying abilities and needs?

Stories about school assessment: With an increased push for 'accountability' in schools, what can test scores tell us about teacher effectiveness and student learning − and what can't they tell us? What does the data say about how schools at all levels are performing?

Stories about government influence: Who are the people and groups most instrumental in crafting education policy? What are their priorities and agendas? And how do they work together when they disagree?

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Stories about money: How do local, state, and federal governments pay to support the education policies they craft? How do direct costs of going to school − from textbooks to tuition − hit a parent or student's bottom line? And how do changing budgets and funding formulas affect learning and teaching?

Here are three of the key projections from the report — click on the graphs to enlarge them:

NCES Education Spending Statistics/Click to Enlarge

(1) Spending, after a few steady years, will go up. Measured in 2008-09 dollars, education spending was $354 billion in 1995. That number will have nearly doubled to $627 billion in 2020, the NCES projections show. That’s an increase of about 20 percent from current spending — the most recent numbers show the U.S. spends more than $511 billion on education.

NCES Graduation Numbers/Click to Enlarge

(2) Indiana’s graduation numbers will show a slight decrease, mirroring the national trend. Nationally, the projections show overall graduation numbers will remain largely flat, overall decreasing by 0.6 percent by 2020-21. In Indiana, the statistical models show roughly 2,000 fewer students will graduate from high school — this after an increase of 4,000 graduates between 2002 and 2008.

NCES Teacher-to-Pupil Ratio/Click to Enlarge

(3) Teacher-to-pupil ratios will fall, if only slightly. It should come as a great relief to teachers to know that they’ll have to deal with 0.3 fewer students in their classroom, on average by 2020 — at least, if the projections hold true. The current teacher-to-pupil ratio from K-12 of 15.0 students per teacher will be 14.7 students by 2020.

Just as key as these findings is the question: Will they hold true? These projections are all based on statistical regression models, but statistics aren’t the whole story.

For example: The spending projections do reflect the current ethos of lawmakers to ‘do more with less’ and hold the line on spending for now — no increases, maybe decreases. But does that mean lawmakers will have to increase spending in the future as these projections suggest?